Question Regarding Power Supplies

How much money are you looking to spend?

If you have money to spend I would get an Antec PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...103-910&DEPA=0

Read the customer reviews, 5/5 stars

That's the one i have powering my AMD box and i have to tell you, it's very very quiet and 550 Watts gives you plenty of excess wattage so that as future graphics cards become more power hungry, you have wiggle room

If you are looking to spend less, go for the 480 Watt Antec PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-914&depa=0

It's a little bit more in price than the one that you were looking at, but not that much more and it will pump out more wattage to give you some room to expand

With your current setup, i would guess you wouldn't need more than 350 watts, however it's not all about max watts but how much power (amps) is being pushed out on the 3.3V, 5V, and 12V rails. I believe that an intel motherboard is powered from the 5V rail whereas AMD based mobos are powered off of the 12V rail. As for drives, anything that goes into any of your bays like hard drives, cd-rom/dvd drives, etc. are powered off of the 12V rail. I don't recall which rail fans are powered off of. However in general, unless you are slapping on multiple 10K Raid drives with mulitiple cd-rom/dvd drives, and tons of fans and UV lighting, etc. you shouldn't worry about all of the 3.3V, 5V, 12V stuff.

for what you have now 350 Watts should be enough. However if you would like a more powerful video card in the future, you should get something in the 500 Watt range. The new nvidia 6800 card, aka "the beast", Nvidia recommends a 480 watt psu. The new ATI x800 I hear requires far less power than its nvidia counterpart, but to best "future-proof" yourself, i would opt for the Antec 550 psu, if money is not a concern for you.

I suggest you read the customer reviews on it. Trust me, it is VERY quiet and i live in a manhattan studio, so i sleep with it running in the same room without any problems and as for the blue led's on the psu's fan, don't worry about it. not very bright and intrusive and honestly, it looks pretty cool. I turn the lights off in my apt and i can barely notice it. but if you really wanted to, you could probably remove it and put in a standard 80mm fan in its place that didn't have any led lights.

once again, read the customer reviews on newegg.com for the product

by the way, the best thing about newegg, if you don't like it, you can request an RMA online, and you're approved automatically, return it and try something else. However you pay a restocking fee i believe, but Newegg.com is the best source for any of your computer parts needs, in my opinion

I would do between 450-550 watt powersupply, Take a look at enermax, and antec. they make really good powersupplies, each w/ adjustable fan speed, for low noise.

the number of fans is dictated by your case design. If your case has been designed with only one fan, than you can't really do much about it except perhaps there is something that you can mount in a bay drive with minature fans. not sure. as for whether you should add more fans, depends on how large that one fan of yours is and how well it keeps your machine cool. If you're not getting any BSOD's then you're probably fine. if your mobo supports temp monitoring you should check your mobo/processor/gpu temps to see how high/low they are. If you don't have some way of monitoring, i think you can buy some kind of digital temp monitoring device, stick it inside your case for a few hours with the machine running to get an idea of what the temps inside the case are. just to give you a point of reference my box is very well ventilated, i've got 4 x 80mm fans on my case and a cooler master temp/fan control box mounted in a 5.25" drive (check my sig for what else i have on my machine) with a small intake fan on it as well and the case temp of my box (inside) ranges from 30 C to 34 C (playing Far Cry) depending on whether i have my air conditioning on in my apt. This is way cooler than my iXPS temp so i know i must be doing something right with my desktop. also the mobo temp is in the low 30's and the cpu temps are in the high 30's and low 40's are full load

you could get away with a good 300w psu... nothing in that case sucks power that'd remotely need a 450+w well-named one... if you don't overclock one fan is well more than enough.. most people can probably even get away with just the hsf on the cpu.. a p4 northwood can handle temps safely up to 50C.. i wouldn't push it more than 53c under full load but really unless you live in the desert with constant 100 degree weather indoors the one fan will be plenty if you don't oc and don't have a faulty hsf..